Quinn Stacey – Show & Tell Presentation

When I think about how visual design has influenced my tastes personally, inevitably LP covers and book covers appear in my mind. These forms of content/product design appeal to me because they are intended to enhance the experience of the art contained within the packaging. A layman’s view of packaging is often as analogous to garbage, a disposable item meant to be discarded when the real product has been consumed in some way. Effective packaging, like the examples I am about to give, really add to the desirability of the content.

Originally, I had intended to show a portion of a documentary by the English rock band Joy Division in which the graphic designer, Peter Saville, explains step-by-step the choices that he made and the direction given by the band. As I thought more about the project, I was drawn to album covers that don’t necessarily have the (current, at least) fame associated with their design. In 2015, Rolling Stone Magazine posted an article concerning the cover, which a valuable video featured Saville explaining the creation of the cover of Joy Division’s album Unknown Pleasures, as well as an explanation of the image featured. The Unknown Pleasures.

I chose for the focus of my presentation the album Free Jazz by the Ornette Coleman Double Quartet. I find its design to be absolutely engaging and powerful, particularly the typography, which leads me to the focus of my presentation: typography in the modernist era as embodied by the Helvetica typeface.

The Helvetica documentary really showed me the power of a typeface/font and how integral typography is to graphic design. Helvetica is used on the cover of Ornette Coleman’s album, and I chose this album as my subject without knowing anything about it or its history. I intended to highlight elements of the Coleman album cover; however, when I realized that Helvetica was used, I realized how important and pervasive that typeface is/was.